Angel was part of an all-conquering Team Wales that romped home with a staggering 26 medals from 31 competitors. Needless to say, the positive vibe in the Welsh camp played a big part in her success:
“It was really fun and everyone was there supporting you,” she says. “If you were a bit down someone would come along and boost you back up. It was really good. There was barely anyone down and everyone had high hopes and was doing well in their competitions. Once we started winning we just carried on!”
The three times British Espoir Champion, most recently in 2010, has been a gymnast since the tender age of fi ve. A former Welsh champion, and queen of the beam at the Northern Europeans in Finland, Romaeo was always destined for sports stardom, coming as she does from a sporting family that boasts boxing brother Romeo and older sister Venus, who is also a gymnast.
“It was my older brother who was trying everything, every different sport and then he liked gymnastics. When we were watching him on the sidelines, we were just like: ‘We can do this!’ Then one of the coaches brought us in and after two weeks we were training fi ve days a week!
“It’s nice, training and competing with Venus, because we can support each other and stuff but we’re very competitive! We’re always trying to beat each other and I’m winning at the moment! We’re all really competitive in my family. We’re like a team though and no matter who is competing we all cheer each other on.”
Although she will be too young to compete at the London 2012 Olympics (sister Venus is a hopeful), Romaeo will be eagerly watching the whole thing and is excited at the prospect of seeing her GB team mates in action on home soil.
“I’m really excited about London 2012 - watching Beth (Tweddle) and all the other girls. It’ll be nice watching all the Great Britain girls compete against every country there! GB squads are split into the older ones, the teenagers, and then the younger ones. Sometimes the coaches bring the younger ones to the older squad though, so we can learn off them. They tell us that you can’t stop when you’re doing really well; you just have to keep going and fi ght through everything that’s tough.”
Good advice. Something that stood her in good stead after a disappointing outing at the European Youth Olympics gave her much to think about before bouncing back to form.
“The competition didn’t go so well,” she says. “I fell three times. So it wasn’t very good but after doing the Youth Commonwealths it put me back up and I knew I could do it. It made me think ‘I can’t do it again, I need to try harder.’ Then I did and I won the gold!"
So how exactly does a fl edgling gymnast balance the pressures of fulltime training and studying towards an equally daunting hurdle – GCSE exams, which loom on the horizon?
“We used to leave school half days but it’s changed now because we’ve got Dieter now as our new extra coach,” she chirps. “He wanted us to train in the morning for three hours and in the afternoon for three hours. So whatever lessons we miss in the morning they’ll give us homework or we copy up after training. It’s hard work getting my brain in gear after training! I’m quite nervous about my GCSEs – I really want to get good grades. I’m trying to get As, Bs or Cs – I don’t really want lower than that!”
Clearly that competitive streak runs way beyond gymnastics but what of the future in a sport where competitors peak in their teens and are considered old by their early twenties?
“I’ll concentrate full time on gymnastics after my GCSEs and if I do go on to sixth form, or college, or uni, I’ll still manage it but I’ll do a bit more gym. I’ll carry on hopefully until 2016 and maybe 2018. It gets really hard as you get older because your bones aren’t as strong and your muscles aren’t as good as they used to be. You get taller and you’re growing a lot more. So it’s a bit harder and you lose a lot of your stuff but if you fi ght through it you’ll be ok.
“I’d like to be an actress but I don’t really know what else I’d be. If I don’t make it as an actress I’ll be a gym coach or a judge.” It wouldn’t take a huge leap of imagination to picture Romaeo swapping the beam for the boards. Either way, keep an eye on your televisions because you’re going to see a lot more of this pocket rocket!
issue19twothousand&twelve sportingwales
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